The One in A Thousand
by Rochelle Templer
Summary: After a tragedy within the FBI, Booth and Sweets ponder failure and the odds in life.


Author's Note:  This idea came to me while I was driving home one night, listening to the radio. Just another little Booth/Sweets friendship piece. Those who read my work know how much I love them. ;)

I do not own Bones or any of its characters. Nor do I own the Kipling poem quoted in this story.

Thank you to everyone who reads/favorites/reviews this. It's greatly appreciated. :D

The One in a Thousand

It was a somber day within the halls of the FBI building. Sitting in his office, Special Agent Seeley Booth, could feel the disbelief and tension in the air as sure he could feel the papers he held in his hands and the hard wooden desk under his forearms. It was a tangible thing that no one wanted to speak of, but everyone could sense anyway.

They had all found out a few hours ago that one of their own, an Agent Martin Handler, had committed suicide just this last Friday. Everyone was stunned. All the people who saw him before he left work that day said that he seemed fine. But late that night, he apparently took his life with his own gun. His wife had been out of town, and she had found the body early this morning. The FBI had been called in, and thus far everything pointed to suicide.

Booth sighed; he had seen this type of thing other times before both during his time in the military and while working for the Bureau. It wasn't talked about openly, but he knew how this job could get under a person's skin. Too many people couldn't separate themselves from their work, or more specifically from their cases, and it would slowly eat away at their souls. Those that didn't turn to bad relationships or the bottle would often take their own lives.

Booth had heard word that the funeral would be later this week and planned to go. While he didn't know Handler personally, he knew that he was a good agent, who was passionate about his job.

'_Maybe he was a little too dedicated,' _Booth mused.

It was a slow day at work, for a change. Booth had used the time to catch up on paperwork. He leaned back in his chair and frowned. This was his least favorite thing about his job, but he knew it had to be done. He looked at the clock and saw that it was time for him to leave. He looked over at an envelope that he had sitting on his desk; inside were a pair of tickets to a hockey game that was due to start in a few hours. He had planned on taking Bones, but she was busy with some ancient remains that had been brought in that day. He picked up the envelope and studied the tickets.

'_I can find someone else….maybe Cam…'_

Booth shuffled the papers into piles and shut his laptop down. He then left the office and was starting to reach for his cell phone when he heard someone call his name. He turned to see two junior agents, Donaldson and Williams, walking toward him. They stopped to stand with him in front of the elevator.

"Hey Booth, some of us guys are meeting up at Talia's bar later for a few rounds. You know sort of a last toast for Handler. You wanna join us?"

"Sorry guys, I've already got plans," Booth said. "But don't worry; I'll be at the funeral." Donaldson nodded.

"Probably taking out that hot scientist again," he said with a smirk. "I hear she's a handful, but totally worth it." Booth smirked back, but remained silent. He saw Williams suddenly nudge Donaldson in the arm and the two of them scowled at something. Booth turned to see what they were looking at.

Walking down the corridor by himself was Sweets. He appeared to be looking for something and he turned the corner. Booth looked back to see angry looks on the agents' faces.

"He's got some nerve showing his face today," Williams growled. "After what happened."

"What do you mean?" Booth said, narrowing his eyes.

"Didn't you know?" Donaldson asked. "After his partner got shot, they sent Handler to that boy shrink for therapy. Some job he did."

"No kidding," Williams said, shaking his head. "I don't know what the higher ups were thinking when they hired a child like that for this job. I don't care how gifted he's supposed to be, he probably doesn't have a clue to what we go through in the field. How in the world was he supposed to help Handler?"

Booth said nothing and kept his face neutral.

'_The worst thing that's probably happened to him is that he lost at Mortal Kombat.'_

Booth sighed inwardly. He had said that to Bones in front of Sweets back when he was first seeing him for therapy. Over the last couple of years, Booth had learned that Sweets had probably gone through more hardship by age twenty-two than most people would in their entire lives. Hardships that he was sure Donaldson and Williams couldn't begin to comprehend.

Sweets came back around the corner and was walking toward them. He started to smile when he saw Booth, but after seeing the expressions of the other two agents; he hung his head and started to quicken his pace. Disgusted, Booth reached out to grab Sweets by the arm to stop him.

"Hey Sweets, you owe me dinner tonight, remember?" he said. Sweets furrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

"Um…no I don't remember."

Just then the elevator opened, and Booth put his arm around Sweets' shoulders and guided him in.

"Don't try to weasel out of it now," Booth said. "I'm free now, so let's go." Booth reached over and punched the 'down' button with his thumb, closing the door on the incredulous looks from Donaldson and Williams.

* * *

The two of them ended up at the Founding Fathers bar and they sat at a side table toward the back of the place. Booth ordered drinks for both of them along with their food.

"Agent Booth, I'm not really in the mood for…"

"Yes you are Sweets," Booth interrupted. "Whether you know it or not, you are." When the drinks arrived Booth sat one right in front of Sweets.

"Go ahead. I'm sure you can use it right now," he said. Sweets nodded and took a drink, wincing a little as it went down. The two of them sipped at their drinks until the food arrived. Once it did and they had both eaten a little of it, Sweets spoke up.

"Thank you for what you did there," he said, picking at his food. "It…it had been difficult like that all day and I…I really appreciated it."

"Don't worry about it," Booth said, brushing it off. "Besides after today, I needed to unwind myself." He took a couple more bites before he began to notice that Sweets was spending more time shifting his food around his plate than eating it.

"All right Sweets, what's on your mind?" he said. "Is it Handler?" Sweets jumped a little.

"I heard that you were treating him," Booth continued. "Look, I'm sure you did everything you could to help him. But I know that he'd been having issues for a while now. And then with the death of his partner…well that was probably just the last straw for him." Sweets took another drink and then sighed.

"I know," he said. "They teach you that you can't save every patient, that sometimes the worst happens, and that, ultimately, it's always up to the patient themselves if they are going to get better. But…." He fell silent and Booth watched as he worked hard to maintain his composure.

"Booth…do you ever feel like you're just chasing shadows, and that no matter what you accomplish…that darkness is always going to win in the end?" Booth finished his drink and leaned toward Sweets. He could tell that this was not a clinical question, but a personal one.

"This is not just about Handler, is it?" he said. Sweets slowly shook his head. Booth nodded and went back to eating while he waited for Sweets to speak.

"I…I was twelve when I entered high school," Sweets finally said. "I guess you can imagine what that was like. Anyway, I was friends with this one guy; he was a couple years older than me. He was smart, but he just could not fit in anywhere. I mean maybe that was part of the reason we got along, neither one of us was exactly Mr. Popularity."

Sweets took a large gulp from his drink and gasped a bit afterwards. He then waited to recover before talking again.

"People were really cruel to him," he said. "You know what idiots people can be at that age. I tried to be his friend, but he was…angry. Angry at the world and depressed. I became worried, so I tried talking to his parents once. But they just scolded me like a little kid and told me to mind my own business."

What happened?" Booth asked gently.

"It was after I transferred to Temple University. By that point, I hadn't seen him for a couple years, but we still called each other once in a great while. Then one day my dad shows up and tells me that my old high school friend had shot himself with a hunting rifle." Sweets swallowed hard and reached for his drink again, but decided against it.

"I mean, he was eighteen years old, and he was going to graduate in a couple months anyway. He would have been able to start a new life away from those jerks who tormented him. But…I guess he couldn't take it anymore." Sweets went ahead this time and finished his drink in one gulp.

"I remember thinking that if I had just tried harder to get through to his parents…." Sweets muttered. "Or if maybe I had had my dad talk to them instead, maybe…"

"Sweets, you were just a kid," Booth said. "It wasn't your fault. It probably wasn't anyone's fault." Sweets shook his head.

"Handler…I knew he wasn't taking the death of his partner well," he continued. "I had him removed from field work, but I tried to make sure he could continue to keep working, because I knew how important his job was to his sense of self. I wanted him to take the time to gain some perspective. I explained that to him, and I thought that he understood my reasoning." Sweets gulped.

"I…I thought we were making real progress. How could I have been so blind to what he was feeling?"

"You just misread him is all," Booth said. "These things happen."

"A man's dead," Sweets snapped. "He's dead because I made a bad call and didn't act quickly enough. I can't afford to make mistakes like that. Not with people's lives."

Booth leaned back and nodded again. He finished his meal and sat quietly for a minute. Then he reached into to his pocket for his wallet. He opened it up and pulled out a photo from an inner fold. He sat it on the table in front of Sweets.

The picture was the kind that they take in school. It was a photo of a boy who didn't look more than eight or nine years old. The corners on it were worn, and the color on the picture had cracked a little.

"It was a few years ago, before I met Bones or any of you," Booth said. "This boy had been kidnapped. I had the guy who I was sure was the perp in the interrogation room and I was trying to get the kid's whereabouts out of him." Sweets picked up the picture to look at it more closely, and Booth sighed.

"That guy…he just kept smiling and telling me that I would be sorry that I crossed him. One of the tech guys was trying to get my attention while I was interviewing that psycho, but I kept brushing him off because I was convinced that I could get the truth out of this weirdo. After two more hours, I finally decided to see what the guy was trying to tell me. Turns out that the lab guys had figured out that this sicko had a partner."

Sweets looked up, concerned about where this story was going, but Booth was staring at the wall.

"We were able to figure out where the kid was, but it was too late. He had been dead for a couple hours by that point," Booth said. "I had wasted all that time trying to get that guy to confess, when I should have been looking into other leads. I was just so confident that I had him…" Booth shook his head.

"I'll never forget the looks on his parents' faces when we told them what happened to their son."

"Agent Booth, I…I'm sorry," Sweets whispered. Booth looked over at him, and then leaned in even closer than before.

"Listen Sweets, the point of all this is that, no matter how good you are…no matter how many people you save…there's always going to be that one. That one out of maybe a thousand cases where you'll fail no matter how hard you try. Now, I know that you'll never get over that one, but that's when you need to remember all the others you helped, all the times that it went right."

Sweets leaned back in his chair. Booth's words had hit him in the core of his being. He knew that failing in a case like that would have been very hard for Booth, and he was grateful that he was willing to share that with him to help him feel better.

'_One in a thousand,'_ Sweets thought. Suddenly a line from a poem he read a long time ago came back to him.

'_Nine hundred and ninety-nine depend_

_On what the world sees in you_

_But the thousandth man will stand your friend_

_With the whole round world agin you.'_

"The thousandth man…" Sweets mumbled.

"'Nine hundred and ninety-nine call/ For silver and gold in their dealings,'" Booth recited. "'But the thousandth man, he's worth 'em all/ Because you can show him your feelings.'"

Sweets goggled at him, and Booth smirked.

"Hey, while you may be busy standing in line to see sci-fi films and spending countless hours playing video games, I have cracked open a book or two from time to time," he said. Sweets finally started to smile.

"Really? I thought comic books and beer were more your speed."

"Watch it Sweets," Booth growled with an impish look. "This isn't therapy, so I actually do have my gun on me." Sweets snorted and took a big bite of his food, not minding that it had cooled off some.

"You know, I have tickets for that hockey game tonight," Booth said. "Interested?"

"Let me guess, Doctor Brennan was busy tonight." Booth chuckled and shrugged.

"Take what you can get…you want to come or not?"

"Sure," Sweets grinned.

"Good. Then hurry and finish up. I want to get their early so I can get a good parking spot." Sweets nodded and started to eat his food a little faster. He thought again about what Booth had told him. While he still felt bad about what had happened to Handler, in another way, Sweets felt like he had beaten the odds somehow.

'_There may be that one in a thousand where I'll fail…but maybe there is also that one time…the time when I was fortunate enough to find something far more valuable than I could have ever imagined.'_

Sweets smiled again as Booth actually pulled out his wallet to help with the bill for a change.


End file.
